SOUTHWEST ASIA -- The daily routine of a production superintendent includes visiting all of their aircraft and ensuring their crew chiefs have everything thing they need to have the aircraft mission ready.
During one of these trips to a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft here, Master Sgt.’s Johnathan Ferguson and Christopher Mansfield, 5th Expeditionary Air Mobility Squadron production superintendents, spotted something out of the ordinary.
“I was headed out to check on a few of my Airmen to see how they were doing,” said Ferguson, deployed from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. “I saw this little fella sitting on the ground in front of the airplane, probably about 50 feet away.”
Ferguson spotted an unexploded ordnance. UXOs can be deadly or cause catastrophic damage to a nearby aircraft if they were triggered to go off. It is unclear how it got there but it had to have been dropped by a service member before entering or after exiting the aircraft on a prior mission at the busiest aerial port in the U.S. Central Commands area of responsibility.
“All of our training tells us if you didn’t drop don’t pick it up,” said Ferguson. “I called it in and got everyone away from the area and set up a cordon.”
Since they didn’t know exactly what the object was, first responders arrived to the scene to quickly determine the best course of action.
A team from the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing explosive ordnance disposal unit was able to safely remove and dispose of the UXO, which turned out to be a damaged M203 grenade launcher star parachute flare.
“The actions of Master Sgt. Ferguson and Mansfield are the epitome of what it means to be a 5th EAMS Airman,” said Capt. Shannon Geoghagan, 5th EAMS operations officer. “Their hard work and attention to detail is instrumental to the safe generation of C-17 missions here.”